Meet teenagers Priya Vulchi and Winona Guo who collaborated with Princeton University on ‘The Classroom Index,’ a textbook devoted to racial literacy.

Seventeen-year-old Winona Guo and Priya Vulchi want to change the world and they’re already on their way to doing just that. Priya and Winona are the co-founders and co-presidents of the textbook Princeton Choose: The Classroom Index. That's right, they designed and created their own textbook with the help of Princeton University’s Department of African American Studies. Unlike other textbooks, The Classroom Index pairs the stories of marginalized people both local to Princeton High School (where both Priya and Winona are students) and nationwide with current cultural and historic events in an effort to make the discussion of racial literacy that much more engaging to students and teachers. And it's the winner of the 2016 Princeton University Princeton Prize in Race Relations, the 2016 Joint Effort’s Witherspoon-Jackson Community Youth To Watch, and the 2016 Not In Our Town’s Unity Award, among others .

Before Priya and Winona created The Classroom Index, they created Choose, a platform where they began sharing the stories of race and their community online, which now also is the place to find more information about the Classroom Index. They started Choose itself with the goal of joining the movement around and the discussion of race, but its creation in its early stages left even their friends skeptical for the need to discuss race. In fact, Priya had a friend question the validity of the racism problem in their community, instead saying “There is no racism in my lunch group. There’s Asians and hispanics and a black girl.” When Priya, who is Indian American, asked her friend who the black girl was she says that the friend told her Priya was the black girl. When Priya and Winona, a Chinese American, first started their journey with Choose, they encountered similar dismissive comments from others of their peers as well. That changed when their peers saw all the great work they have been doing to shift the conversation of race in America and put their words into action. We chatted with the two young activists about racial literacy, their textbook, the importance of diverse stories, their hopes for the future, and more. Check out our interview below and find out why young women of color are going to save us all and change the world for the better.

Teen Vogue: There are a lot of issues with high school history/textbooks. Were there any issues in particular that pushed you to create your own Princeton Choose: The Classroom Index textbook?

Winona Guo: We actually met sophomore year and we had the same AP U.S. History teacher and in class we had been talking about Eric Garner, Ferguson, and other major events. We had started talking in general about race in America and telling our own personal stories. After talking to our parents, teachers, and peers, we realized that people have these really powerful personal stories to share. So, we started going to downtown Princeton and we took photos with our iPhones and started asking people their personal stories about race. Some strangers said ‘this not the town to be talking about race. Go to the next town. You guys are too young to be talking about this.’ but other strangers told us their personal stories from current or experiences from when they were younger and we compiled them and put them on our platform: Princetonchoose.org.

Priya Vulchi: After we collected these stories we were doing some presentations at different schools and to different faculty members talking about the general need to address race and it wasn’t until we spoke to our own high school faculty meeting that the next day a lot of the teachers came up to us and said ‘we understand the issue we just need more concrete substitutes to help our students and create a better learning environment.’ so, we wanted to figure out a way to leverage all these stories that we collected in town and nationwide so we designed The Classroom Index and the first edition was 50-something pages and it was highlighted in Princeton public schools in fifth grade classrooms. After getting feedback, we took notes to make the second edition better. We went from 50-something pages to 224 pages; it was sponsored by the Princeton University Department of African American Studies and the Princeton Education Foundation.

TV: For those who don't know, what is The Classroom Index?

WG: We like to call it a racial literacy toolkit and a textbook. When we started, we read this tweet by Dr. Ruha Benjamin from Princeton University who wrote our Foreword. She wrote “All these schools and districts across our nation aren’t equipping their students with the proper tools to talk about race in America. What we need to do is equip all students with the historical and sociological toolkit for racial literacy.” and that’s really what our book strives to do is just to equip these students with the proper toolkit to talk about race in America.

PV: Each story that we’ve collected… the whole design of the textbook in what we’ve done is connected anecdotes to systemic structures so each story is in place in a historical or contemporary framework and has been researched, so there is lots of context and support for the teacher to invest in racial literacy. Our end goal is for The Classroom Index to become the leading social-justice educator tool in America. What makes The Classroom Index special to us and hopefully to teachers is that it’s made by Winona and myself and our team and we’re all high school students.

TV: You have a diverse team of 10 members working with you on The Classroom Index. What was the decision process in finding a team like? and why was it important for you to make sure your team was a diverse group of people?

PV: When we first started, we had difficulty in creating a team because in the town we live there is a huge culture of silence. People deny that the community has racial tension so many of our peers were not as interested. So, when we started out that is what we encountered but afterwards, when we started exposing the reality of race relations in America, we discovered a lot of students who had this burden on their shoulders and have since joined the movement. There have been people from the beginning who have really believed in us and took the time to help us especially Ayesha Qureshi our communications manager and Protim Adhikari who was the first member of our adult advisory board, all of whom we are grateful for.

WG: We really want to be tackling racial literacy for students across America. We wanted to make sure that our stories (in the textbook) were applicable to students all over America. Our team ends at the stories of interviewees that we had the privilege of working with over the past two years.

TV: On your website, you ask visitors to share their stories. What do you hope will come from allowing potential customers the ability to share their stories?

WG: I think for us we feel a real responsibility to make Princeton Choose and The Classroom Index as effective and meaningful as it possibly can be because people are entrusting us, putting faith in us, and bravely sharing their stories with us. The stories are personal and emotional and it really is an honor for us to be able to share these stories. People have filled out the 'share your story' form on the website. They aren’t inside the books, but on our social media and the website we have a weekly story feature page as well.

PV: People always ask us ‘How do you have time to do this as high school students?’ and it’s really like Winona said, it’s because we feel a deep responsibility for these people and that’s why we strive to create the best teaching tool/textbook that we can make. We are very passionate about making sure that these stories feel like they are on a deserving platform.

TV: At 17, both of you are nearing the end of your high school career, where do you hope the textbook lands when you leave your high school hallways?

PV: Winona and I both got accepted into, Winona into Harvard and me into Princeton, but we want to take a gap year to further develop The Classroom Index. Living in [New York City] we can be exposed to more stories and connect it to more people and talk about race and social justice. There is just a wider array of aspects to the work there that we would like to be exposed to. But at the same time staying connected to our team.

WG: After we leave, Priya and I will continue to do Choose and morph it into a racial and social justice advocacy work for the rest of our lives. We will continue to lead Choose but then Princeton High school will become one of the chapters and we have young boosters, juniors and sophomores who are willing to take that on. In terms of the textbook, we have printed 500 copies with Princeton University’s Department of African American Studies and we can communicate with them for the potential of printing more but as of now, we hope that those copies will impact classrooms. We will spend a year working on the third edition and really polishing that textbook so the third edition will become the leading social justice educator tool in K-12 classrooms which is our dream.

TV: A new edition is scheduled for 2017; in what ways will it differ from your first edition? Will this new edition render the first edition null and void?

PV: We have plans to do a third edition but the first edition was really just for the pilot session (the test run to see how well a potential textbook would do) it was testing out the whole index design of our book to make sure that it was a complementary tool that worked with the personal stories. So, the first edition was for the pilot session and is no longer in use. The second edition however, focuses on race relations so I think it will still be valuable but the third edition is going to take a broader scope on intersectionality of race.

WG: We are really very proud of the second edition but we recognize that there are so many things that need to be improved. The third edition will focus on the intersectionality of race, gender, class, religion, and ability. We heard some feedback from administrators who said we want to purchase this educator tool on race that you guys are providing for us and not that it’s a negative thing but there are other issues that need to be addressed. So we thought why not take the model that we created pairing stories and teachers' lesson plans to really talk about all of these social justice issue that really matter.

TV: What do you hope for the future of The Classroom Index? Where would you like it to take you both?

PV: Choose has taught me that if you want change you’ve got to put the work in. You can’t just talk about what you’d like to be fixed and pretend that reality isn’t the current and present moment. Get real even if it’s uncomfortable and that will ensure change and I think the classroom index has exemplified that. We hope that it will impact classrooms nationwide and that all K-12 students in the United States will develop the tools for racial literacy using our book as a platform.

WG: Not just the textbook but Choose in general and the social justice movement in general; I think so far in my lifetime has really transformed my understanding and thinking about what matters in the larger context of myself and my family and my close community. And what issues in the United States and the world need addressing immediately. I think there has been a huge call to action. That’s lifelong work. We are not going to stop in high school, we are not going to stop in college. The movement, The Classroom Index, and Choose, and all the amazing people we have met over the past two years have really inspired me and Priya, I’m sure, to dedicate our lives to this work.

TV: What were some of the challenges faced when creating this project?

WG: Starting off I think a lot of it was just overcoming this personal inertia to get involved in this work because the work is difficult and it’s been emotionally challenging for activists around the country, both of us included. We weren’t sure when we started, if we wanted to commit our time and energy to this work but we decided that it is worth it. In the end, I think there is nothing more important than social justice and equity and equality, and harmony for people of all backgrounds across the united states. That is really what we committed our lives to and for the past two years and the rest of our lives to. With Priya being Indian American and myself, Chinese American, this is something we have been struggling to grapple with. We are asked why we care about this issue to which, we have many responses but we feel like we are always seen as this "model minority" or "silent minority."

PV: So another struggle has been that there’s not many Asian American activists that we found or can look up to so a struggle has been figuring out our role in this whole movement. Also, in terms of just creating a textbook, it was a huge learning curve in terms of how to publish, copyright, and laying out the design etc. All of that was a huge learning process for us.

TV: What are your favorite school subjects? What careers do you hope to go into?

WG: We are the type of students who enjoy all of our classes. We enjoy learning across all subjects. Some of my favorite classes in Princeton High school have also been math and science. We feel that social justice work is lifelong work and we hope to continue Choose for the rest of our lives. We aren’t 100% sure that we are taking a gap year. Speaking for myself, after the gap year, at Harvard I am hoping to study social studies or sociology and pair that up with economics, law, or business. Hopefully, pair social justice up with something else and really make an impact that way.

PV: Winona and I both have AP Government and Politics and this is with the same teacher who inspired us to first start Choose sophomore year while speaking about current events in AP U.S. History class. We just love the intersection of current events in reality with course content and it’s got to be the most engaging work. I am on the same page with Winona so continuing Choose for the rest of my life. When I go to Princeton, I am considering interdisciplinary fields so merging social justice with another subject area so I can identify what needs improving in that area and am able to address it with my background in social justice.

TV: How does the idea of racial literacy go beyond the classroom? In what ways does racial literacy impact larger cultural discussions, such as the election?

PV: Why we thought it was important for kids our own age and especially younger than us to start developing racial literacy is because it’s equipping students to have contact with the world beyond the classroom. So current events and even the election. When we first started what inspired us was Eric Garner and the events that we were discussing in our AP History class. It enables students to enact change, it inspires activists so students leave the classroom not only equipped with other literacy such as math, reading, and science to make a difference in the world ,but they are equipped now with a will and a fight in them for social justice.

WG: In so many schools and districts across the nation social justice and social literacy education is still so lacking and social justice education we feel is everything. We want all students to be equipped with this toolkit and the reality of society and the United States and the inequality in society and the United States. There are studies out there that show that kids start recognizing racism as young as 3 and 4 and these kids are recognizing these issues and not talking about them in the classroom and that is totally not okay.